FutureSport 2016: Discovery and Eurosport to reveal planning for Olympic Games coverage

Dominic Baillie, Discovery, Chief Technology Officer, Olympics & Sports

Chelsea Football Club in London will the venue for SVG Europe’s biggest ever UK event November 30, and at the top of the programme is ‘Olympic Games Discovery: Pushing the Boundaries of Innovation’. A record-breaking crowd of nearly 300 will witness Dominic Baillie, Discovery, Chief Technology Officer, Olympics & Sports and Simon Farnsworth, Discovery, Senior Vice President, Olympic Technical Distribution discussing future Olympic Games broadcast coverage planning with moderator Fergal Ringrose, SVG Europe Executive Editor.

In mid-2015 Discovery Communications and its European sports broadcaster Eurosport acquired from the International Olympic Committee the TV and multi-platform rights in 50 European markets for four editions of the Olympic Games, from 2018 to 2024.

Discovery is now developing its strategy to bring every moment of the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Games to more viewers across all screens, looking at migration to IP and cloud for content management and distribution, plus strategic oversight of content aggregation and signal distribution from Olympic Games venue sites to Discovery and to key broadcast partners — following a series of subsequent sublicensing deals for European territories.

FutureSport provides the first opportunity for the SVGE community to learn of the colossal task being undertaken by Discovery and Eurosport. Dominic Baillie is responsible for developing and implementing the long-term Olympics and sports technology strategy – spanning event production, linear TV and digital media activity across 55 countries in more than 20 languages. Baillie is has more than 15 years of experience in broadcasting. He joined from Sky News Arabia, where he was CTO for engineering, development and technical operations. Prior to this, Baillie was CTO at Ten Sports, Asia’s leading sports network, where he built a future proof platform to enable the channel’s transition to HD.

Simon Farnsworth, Discovery, Senior Vice President, Olympic Technical Distribution

Simon Farnsworth oversees content aggregation, and will manage the transport of content from the Olympic venues to Discovery. He brings deep commercial and technical experience having held several senior positions at Globecast, a leading provider of media services for broadcasters. Most recently he was CEO of Telstra Broadcast Services (formerly Globecast Australia) and was responsible for developing and implementing the business strategy, successfully increasing the organisation’s revenue by 20% and overseeing the sale of Globecast Australia to Telstra.